Learning to love the storyteller inside

How Nōto got started and celebrating a milestone 💃🏻

So… I have happy news! You all are the loveliest bunch and because of your support, Nōto reached a milestone last week! 🥹 🎉

A little backstory 📘

Last June, I celebrated turning 30 then lost my job while on PTO. With mass layoffs tumbling across the tech industry, perhaps I should’ve seen it coming, but I didn’t.

To keep myself from despair, I wanted to explore a new project in my free time. So a couple weeks after losing my job, I took a spoonful of courage and introduced this newsletter to the internet! That’s when Nōto was born.

The decision to share online again came after months of dilly-dallying and working through my insecurities. When I first got the idea to try Substack in January 2023, I made myself a list of questions:

1. What’s the point of writing and sharing?

2. What’s my voice?

3. What am I afraid of if I share publicly?

4. If those fears weren’t in the way, what would I want to write about?

5. What would I want to accomplish with a newsletter?

6. How can I veer from solely “spiritual writing?”

7. Who am I writing for?

8. What would I feature/offer/highlight?

9. Why do I feel so stuck and what can be done about it?

10. What do I need?

In predictable Erika fashion, my fears outweighed any other answer. Here they are, in case you’re wondering:

• Afraid to feel phony or pigeonholed

• Afraid of not saying what I feel compelled to say because it might offend, surprise, or not fit what’s expected of me

• Afraid someone might think that I think I’m an expert (😆)

• Don’t want specific people to have access to my thoughts or experiences

• Have no idea what my “niche” is or where I fit in

• Want to have integrity in how I live offline and present myself online

My carousel of fears had me spinning. I didn’t know where to go from my not-so-merry-go-round. Aaron, my biggest supporter and the best listener, brought me to his whiteboard and wrote down what he heard me saying. After his thorough questions and analysis, he gave me a (mostly legible) map to help me find my way. This was a real gift. I felt nervous to exit the fear-loop, but also curious enough and willing to try.

The map that helped transform how I see myself.

The whiteboard session revealed an obvious question of identity. What I really wanted to know was: Do I have the right to be me?

Aaron’s work in brand strategy and design guided the next assignment. He had me read through Archetypes in Branding to uncover my own “archetype.” While I wasn’t creating a brand identity, I figured this could still be helpful in understanding my story and went with it.

Right away, I filed myself under the Servant archetype. But Aaron knows me well, and after winding discussions and refusing my excuses, he drew the truth from me. I admitted: I have always felt more like a Storyteller. Hearing myself say that word—Storyteller—brought a shy, but sparkly kind of joy to me. A kind of joy I thought belonged to someone else.

You see, my intro to caregiving began at six or seven when my mom was seriously ill. She recovered several years later, but by then, this role (which I was naturally good at!) had zipped over me like a well-fitted onesie. In the years following, every church and ministry environment I participated in blessed the helper, servant, martyr type. Practical service to others seemed the most holy and useful work, and therefore, the surest way to God’s delight.

But if you knew me before college, it would’ve been obvious I was most animated when telling stories by way of movement. From age four till a year post high school, I trained and trained, hoping to become a professional ballet dancer. At my peak, I spent about 30 hours a week in the studio. I dedicated every bit of my youthful energy to this art, practicing and rehearsing and sweating (sometimes bleeding) with the hopes of morphing into a graceful and compelling storyteller. Onstage, I felt the responsibility and joy of guiding an audience to another world. Fairytales moved through my lithe limbs, leading my steps as I helped give shape to a story.

Then came injury and soon after, illness. I stopped dancing—almost by accident—and never returned. The disruption of an illness was as disorienting as you’d imagine. Especially at 18. I wanted to do something good within my new limitations, and given my upbringing and sincere love for helping others, the Servant path was a natural choice. Over the next decade, when I wasn’t bedridden or going through treatment, I worked primarily in faith-based spaces offering organizations, families, and individuals practical support.

I also started writing again in my twenties, and while I enjoyed it, I saw it as my duty to only write about suffering and spiritual things (whatever that means?). My words were sincere but so, so serious. The narrow focus wasn’t wrong, but it never quite felt like me. I wanted to share book reviews and thoughts about creativity and be a little silly! I hardly allowed myself the pleasure. Then 2019 happened and I stopped writing publicly, unsure if I’d reemerge online someday.

When I considered returning online last year, I was afraid to acknowledge and embrace the Storyteller inside me. I’d moralized the path of a Servant, left no room for wiggles, and ended up bumping into an issue of integrity. I wanted to be myself, but I wasn’t sure if a) I could and b) how. Aaron’s map and encouragement to unapologetically be myself helped a lot.

As I began unfolding my fears and looking at their creases, a lovely thought came to me. One’s aliveness can take on all sorts of radiant and divergent forms, and that’s part of what keeps this world so fascinating. And I can be a part of that! This isn’t new info of course, but the comfort it gave was a first.

Where I’m sitting as I write this today.

When I brought Nōto to the internet world, I committed to show up with more of myself: thoughtful, playful, empathetic, and colorful. I’m telling stories again, but this time instead of moving my body onstage, I’m moving words and sentences and images on a page, hoping to connect with others as we marvel at our shared and varied human experiences.

This newsletter is still young, still fresh, and I’m certainly still experimenting with its possibilities. That’s not scary to me anymore. It’s invigorating!

THANK YOU—all 100 of you—for being here as I emerge from the stage wings and begin to find my steps again. They’re a bit unrehearsed and not at all perfect, but I’m having a wonderful time out here. I hope you are, too. 🧚‍♀️

—E.T.

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Other news! 🗞️

My first interview

I got to participate in the Mothers Who Make series by

Heidi Fiedler

! Here’s a little snippet:

When do you feel most creative?
Most often, I’ll find a spotlight of creativity when I’m attentive to my right-now-life. An idea might flicker while my stepson and I dance along the river or while my husband puts him to sleep and I scrub dinner remnants from the table. It’s up to me to take that idea, slow down, and tinker with whatever sentence or image or feeling I want to convey.

Thankfully, I can create from most places: in pajamas on the couch, swaying from a hammock, or surrounded by strangers at a coffee shop. What matters more than where I create is the how and the when. It’s important that my heart and mind are attuned and responsive to creativity’s call…

You can read more below!

Erika Tovi: Attuning to Creativity's Call

New reader?

Here are some favorite posts:

🏡 Home, after all those zip codes
What that four letter word means to me now

👠 Chances given and taken
Still moving forward after 12+ years of illness

🗾 Missed in translation
Keeping up with grandparents an ocean away

💒 The freedom to marry differently
How we planned a wedding we actually enjoyed

📚 The joys of Japanese children’s books
And 4 favorites from my childhood

☔️ How I met my husband (or almost didn’t!)
A serendipitous little love story

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